Pat tells me that it’s our blogiversary.\u00a0 Who knew we had a word for that?\u00a0 Did I spell it correctly?<\/p>\n
English is a living language and like all living languages new words happen all the time.\u00a0 Sometimes the new words are necessary to keep up with technology, sometimes with social trends and sometimes just because we seem to be tired of the old words.<\/p>\n
My friends grow tired of having me inform them multiple times about the Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year.\u00a0 In case you haven’t heard a few recent entries include locavore, hypermiling, and last year’s incredibly ugly unfriend.<\/p>\n
Genealogists have a special relationship to words.\u00a0 We often need to understand common words in a new way and to learn older meanings for common words.<\/p>\n
I have, of course, a few modest examples.<\/p>\n
Markers.\u00a0 For many of us markers are what cause you to repaint the wall after your children or grandchildren have redecorated the house with them.\u00a0 For genealogists markers are found in cemeteries and are often called tombstones.\u00a0 Now markers are found on chromosomes and will tell you about your relationship to distant family.<\/p>\n
Fireman.\u00a0 A common word for the men (of course, now women also) who come and save our homes and sometimes our lives.\u00a0 When I first started doing genealogy I was surprised to find many firemen in my husband’s family.\u00a0 When I asked my mother-in-law about this she looked at me as if wondering why her son had married an idiot and said, “They worked for the railroad.”\u00a0 Of course, they worked for the railroad.\u00a0 They shoveled coal into the engines to keep the train running.\u00a0 Railroads still have firemen; they do something with engines, no shoveling involved.<\/p>\n
While we’re talking about employment, I think only genealogists and historians recognize cobbler, collier, amanuensis, or wheelwright.<\/p>\n
Genealogists have different meanings for lots of common words like collateral and line and of course, tree.<\/p>\n
And what of the words we find on death certificates?\u00a0 You can chart the history of Western medicine just by looking at the change in entries for the cause of death over the years.\u00a0 No one dies of consumption anymore.\u00a0 That disease is now called tuberculosis after the bacteria that causes it.\u00a0 Happily it is usually treatable and rarely a cause of death.\u00a0 La grippe is now influenza, ague is malaria, and camp fever is typhoid.\u00a0 Remember Pat’s personal favorite, apoplexy?\u00a0 Now it is known as stroke.\u00a0 Pat is fond of pointing out obituaries in which people die of apoplexy at the table after consuming a joint of beef, several chickens, a bit of sausage, bread with a half pound of butter, and a cobbler accompanied by a pint of cream.\u00a0 It is good that childbed fever and polio are rarely causes of death in this country anymore; sad that we have HIV and MRSA to replace them.<\/p>\n
I love words and I could go on and on, but it’s time to stop, cease, halt, quit, lay off, put a sock in it…you get the idea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pat tells me that it’s our blogiversary.\u00a0 Who knew we had a word for that?\u00a0 Did I spell it correctly? English is a living language and like all living languages new words happen all the time.\u00a0 Sometimes the new words …<\/p>\n